The Military-Industrial Games Complex
In the 2000s, a generation of youth played games that were funded and aided by the US military — a connection that goes back to the very birth of video games.
Jamie Woodcock is a researcher and organizer based in the UK. He is the author of the forthcoming Marx at the Arcades: Consoles, Controllers, and Class Struggle, published by Haymarket and due out in April 2019.
In the 2000s, a generation of youth played games that were funded and aided by the US military — a connection that goes back to the very birth of video games.
Video games like CD Projekt Red’s forthcoming Cyberpunk 2077 are increasingly made under grueling working conditions — a particular irony for a game adopting the cyberpunk genre which, at its best, critiques the dystopian power abuses that so starkly characterize our world.
Video game workers are overwhelmingly young with no trade union experience. But that hasn’t stopped them from organizing.
How call centers quietly became the modern epicenter of precarious, exploitative work.